What to Cook Right Now

Sam Sifton emails readers of Cooking five days a week to talk about food and suggest recipes. That email also appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here.

Good morning. One week from now, we’ll have a new president unless we don’t, and wherever you sit on the political spectrum, that would be a big bummer. Be like Tracy Flick: Say your pre-election prayers.

But don’t just sit on the couch watching prognosticators and surrogates shout. Get into the kitchen and cook. The act of making food helps center us, and the act of serving it helps make us whole. This is what the academy calls an actual fact.

Or you could, as we often do on Wednesdays here, cook without a recipe. Today, for instance, what about roasting some sweet potatoes until they’re fundamentally collapsed? (Put them on a foil-lined pan in a 400-degree oven for, like, an hour.) Slice them open, then paint them inside and out with a mixture of equal parts softened unsalted butter and white miso paste. Put some scallions on top? That’s a rich dinner on its own, but if you want a protein to go with, try pan-roasting a pork chop.

Really, you can’t go wrong. There are thousands and thousands of other recipes to make on Cooking, organized in all sorts of interesting ways. (If you run into trouble with any of them, or with the technology that powers our site and apps, please reach out for help: cookingcare@nytimes.com.)

Also, in The Times’s Food section, read Keith McNally on the pleasures and pains of opening new restaurants, a task he has set to performing 14 times in the last 36 years. (Then you can order Richard Price’s “Lush Life,” a novel that owes a debt to Mr. McNally and pays it off in excellent prose.)

And, should you wish to expand your interests beyond the kitchen and dining room, try this old essay of Jim Harrison’s, on his favorite hunting dogs, in Field & Stream. It’s a reminder that life, at least when you’re not cooking or reading, is best lived outdoors. See you on Friday.